(THE HONORED ONE) CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Brian had time to think.

There wasn’t anything else to do in the void he drifted through now. There were no walls, no light, no sound, and no real sense of having a body. There was only the faint suggestion of breathing because he remembered how to breathe, and the even fainter suggestion of thought because something in him refused to shut down completely. So he thought. And kept thinking. Because the alternative was acknowledging the slow, creeping certainty that he wasn’t alive anymore.

He began with the easy memories, or at least the ones that hurt less.

His family.

That was a disaster even on its best days.

He lingered on his father’s absence, on his mother’s spiraling collapse, on the shouting, on the slammed doors, on the nights he waited for the inevitable footsteps of a boyfriend he did his best to avoid. He thought about how he had learned to move quietly, to make himself unobtrusive and passive in the hope of maintaining peace around him. And he thought about the years he had spent pretending that responsibility made him strong, pretending that taking care of Aisha made him an adult instead of a scared teenager carrying too much weight on shoulders that had already known too much fear.

Then the memories sharpened, as they always did once he stopped trying to avoid them.

Regent.

Tattletale.

Gone.

The final moments replayed again and again in the featureless dark, feeling afresh the pain, the confusion, and the desperate, almost instinctive urge to shield the people he couldn’t protect anymore. The scene blurred together into a single smear of motion and helplessness, and no matter how many times he watched it, no alternate outcome appeared. There was no version where he succeeded.

Only failure.

He told himself it was useless to dwell on it.

He told himself that wallowing wouldn’t change anything.

He told himself all the things Tattletale would have said with that knowing, irritating smirk of hers, a look he missed more than he cared to admit.

None of it stopped him.

So he cursed his mother for teaching him fear.

He cursed her boyfriend for teaching him what it felt like to be powerless.

He cursed his father for showing him how easily a guardian could disappear.

And finally, he cursed himself for not being strong enough or fast enough or smart enough to save any of them. Maybe if he had been stronger, Regent would have made it out. Maybe if he had been smarter, Tattletale wouldn’t have been cornered so quickly. Maybe if he’d been anything other than what he was, Aisha wouldn’t have been forced to watch her brother bleed out on the street. Maybe they would be in a decent school in a decent neighborhood in a decent city far from Brockton Bay and all its rot.

Ah.

Aisha.

Her name fractured the numbness like a plunge into cold water. Even here,, she cut straight through him.

He prayed she hadn’t seen him die—he begged for that, even now—but he remembered looking at her in those final moments. She had been there watching, frozen and helpless as she witnessed something she had no power to stop.

Who would take care of her now? Who would worry for her the way he did? Who would drag her back from the edge when she went too far, or stand between her and the people who would happily chew her up?

He knew he had been overbearing. He knew he had tried too hard to force her toward safety that might not have even existed. But she mattered, more than anything, and no one else had and could ever care for her the way he did.

She needed him.

And he had left her utterly alone.

He didn't know what would happen to her, or what she would do to survive. He didn’t know how far she would fall, or what she would sacrifice, or what the city would take from her if she had no one standing in the way. He wanted something better for her than this miserable, broken place. He wanted her to have a good future, or as good a future as one could have in a world like Earth Bet. He wanted all that and more for her.  

But wanting did nothing.

Because he was dead.

Lung had killed him.

He remembered that much.

And yet, despite common sense telling him that it was too late—that this void, this empty, silent place, was just the last vestige of his mind dealing with his death; a way to ease the transition—he wanted to live, and not because he feared death, although he did, like anyone else would. No, he wanted to live because Aisha still needed him. He wanted to live because whatever remained of their team needed him too, needed their leader, regardless of how impotent he had been.  

Above all else, he wanted to live because if he died now, everything he had carried for so long would fall apart with him.

He wasn’t done.

He couldn’t be done.

He didn’t know if wanting mattered here. He didn’t know if anything mattered here. But he held onto the thought anyway, clinging to it with every spark of consciousness he could still claim.

He had to live.

For Aisha.

For the team.

For the person he still hoped he might grow into if the world gave him one more chance.

He had to.

And then, somewhere far beyond the all-encompassing dark, muted and far away like a sound swallowed by water, something stirred in response. A presence brushed against his awareness, indistinct but undeniably warm in a way the void had never been, and bright in a way that didn’t hurt.

It felt like a hand reaching toward him.

And Brian—Grue—reached back.